The first true sequel to Dead Island is under new management, and they’ve got a strange obsession about scanning trees…

We’ve never made any secret of the fact that we don’t like the Dead Island games. The idea of a of modern day Fallout with zombies sounds good, but the reality of the game – with its wonky action and terrible script – is nowhere near as enjoyable as it should be. Or at least that’s how we see it. The games have been great successes anyway, but Dead Island 2 may be the first one that pleases everyone.

Despite having been around for 15 years German developer Yager has only ever made three games: eponymous combat flight sim Yager, obscure flight sim Aerial Strike, and the much admired story-based shooter Spec Ops: The Line. They don’t seem an obvious choice for Dead Island’s broad humour and unrefined gameplay but they’re certainly a safer pair of hands than original developer Techland.

And we’re more convinced of that than ever, after having a chat with game director Bernd Diemer at Gamescom. He was actually supposed to be on his lunch break, but thankfully he agreed to talk us anyway – hinting at an ambitious sequel that should make Dead Island 2 the best in the series by far.

[General grumbling that Diemer gets to have a lunch break and we don’t.]

BD: Yeah, they’re nice to us.

GC: [laughs]

BD: They told me to say that, it’s not really true. [laughs]

GC: [laughs] Now please don’t take this the wrong way, because I was a big fan of Spec Ops: The Line, but I really don’t like the Dead Island games. And I get in trouble with our readers saying that more than with any other game. But although I can see the appeal in the basic idea I just think that mechanically and aesthetically, and in terms of storytelling, it’s just really not very well made. So it was a real relief to find out you were making the sequel. So, without upsetting your paymasters, what can you say to convince me your game will be better. When did you start work on it?

BD: [sustained laughter] We started, I think, two years ago. There was some talks before that…

GC: So there’s been what, three or four Dead Island spin-offs in that time?

Both: [laughs]

BD: We’re German, so we knew the Deep Silver guys [who are also German – GC] and you run into them at trade shows… So we knew that they were thinking about a sequel, kind of unofficially, and we were finishing up Spec Ops, which was really tough. I mean it was a tough game to make, it took forever.

BD: As you know. It was also, like… the topic itself is not the easiest one. So it wasn’t very easy to do. Critics loved it, most of them – not all of them. Commercially, it wasn’t as loved. While finishing the game the first Dead Island was hugely popular in our studio. A lot of people played it.

But, you know, I’m kind of with everybody. Everybody saw the amazing trailer and thought, ‘Oh my god! Oh my god! I have to play it!’ Then the game came round the corner, and oh… woah… But then I started playing it and it was really fun. Playing with other people, especially, was a lot of fun. I ignored a lot of things in the game…

Because the story of Dead Island, you wouldn’t think so but the storyline is actually pretty grim. Somebody’s gonna throw a nuclear weapon onto the weapon, or something. So everybody will die at the end… and now have fun.

Me personally, what I found creatively very interesting was that this was clearly a game that suffers from a… what’s the phrase? Oh yeah: a ludonarrative dissonance.

GC: That is a hell of a phrase.

BD: [laughs] I didn’t come up with that term, I got it from Richard Lemarchand, who used to be the main narrative designer on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted – so, a company that is very well known for integrating narrative with games really, really, really well. And I thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ They have this amazing trailer, which is really good, and they have this amazing game which is really fun – but they don’t match. And me personally, I thought ‘Hmm, what could we do to not have that happen?’

And that was one of the first things we discussed when we talked with the gentlemen from Deep Silver, when they said, ‘So what do you think of a sequel? Would you be interested?’ And one thing about Yager is that we’re very careful. We don’t make a lot of games, like over the years, so we have to be really, really careful what we pick. Because… I mean that’s true for everyone in development, like triple-A productions take years. So I have to be very careful what I commit myself to, because I’m stuck with it. And nobody wants to work on a s*** game, right?

And I’m super lucky that I’m at a position at Yager that I don’t have to do that. I know that I’m lucky. So we thought carefully about it, we talked to the team and then we said to Deep Silver that we needed a pretty long pre-production phase, like unusually long. A production phase that they also paid for, because we explained to them, ‘At Yager we do things right’. And that means we’re going to do some weird things, we need to figure out some things that players might not even notice.

I’ll give you a bunch of examples. For example we have a spawning system that spawn zombies. Like run-of-the-maill: it’s dynamic, so it looks at how many players there are, and difficultly, blah, blah, blah. But we also wanted our zombies to look different, so we have this kind of like construction kit, so the kit chooses a head from here, a shirt from there, and then throws it into the world.

But then one of our guys said, ‘Wait, so this game is set in California, right?’ So we need to account for the ethnic and gender diversity in California’. So they actually looked it up, like ratio of male to female, Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian, etc. and implemented that into our spawning system. So now the zombies that spawn in our game have the correct diversity as averaged in California. And that is something players will never ever notice.

GC: [laughs] Well, you know they might. Games aren’t exactly great at racial diversity.

BD: I firmly believe it is one of those details that somehow make the product better. Another thing is that we have people that do vegetation and they’re really intense about it. Like Jonas and Steiner, their mission in life currently is to do vegetation for video games. They’re really into it. And Jonas, at one point he came along and he said, ‘Dude, these trees we have…’ We have pictures because we sent some people over there to take pictures.

He said, ‘Dude, these pictures aren’t good enough. We need to scan trees.’ I said, ‘What? Like, 3D scan trees?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah’. ‘You can do that?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’. ‘Look, I’ll give it a try in Berlin’. So he did some test scans in his own time in Berlin, put them into the game…

GC: What is that, like with a hand scanner or something?

BD: It’s like a set-up with multiple cameras and flashlights…

GC: Good god.

BD: It’s what he uses to scan people! Because we have a rig for that, because our whole team is in the game. So he said, ‘We have to scan trees’. I said, ‘Seriously?’ ‘Yes, otherwise they’re not good enough’. And you put them next to each other and he was right.

So we sent him to the States with his scanning rig and he scanned trees for us. So now our trees are in the game. But, then it got complicated. Because it turns out that taking pictures in L.A., no problem, but scanning trees: you need to get a special permit from the parks and rec department.

GC: I hope that guy’s framed the permit on the wall.

BD: [laughs] You have to write them a letter, explaining why you want to scan tree to assure them that you won’t portray the parks of Los Angeles in any derogatory way and that no trees will be harmed during the process. So I can properly say that during the making of this game no trees were harmed.

GC: [sustained laughter] Sorry, I wish I had more time for this.

BD: I can go on for hours.

GC: So, what are you implying? That you’re trying to find some kind of middle ground between the tone of the games and the trailer? Because at E3 it didn’t seem to be taking itself very seriously…

BD: Yes, I mean you do either one or the other, you know? Either it’s serious, and then please be serious, or you’re… not a comedy, but kind of like Zombieland-like ironically funny. But then embrace it. And that’s the thing that I think makes us – it’s kind of hard to talk about yourself – but I think that’s one of the traits that Yager has, that we are serious. Even if we do funny stuff we take it really.. we take it on.

GC: Well, some of the best comedy… the person in the situation doesn’t realise it’s funny. Only the audience does. But thinking back to Spec Ops, its story integration was a great achievement but taken on its own the gameplay wasn’t that remarkable.

BD: Yes, Spec Ops is clearly dominated by narrative.

Dead Island 2 – crossing the line

GC: Do you maybe have the opposite situation with Dead Island 2? Where the story is in the background and you’re focusing more on the mechanics?

BD: It’s not in the background. What we did basically is we thought, ‘Oh hey, we’re making a game. Let’s write a story!’ So we wrote a linear story: beginning, end, betrayal, villain, girl, whatever, classic story… And then we realised, ‘Hey, actually our game is multiplayer’. Because we wanted to have this game where you could jump in and out seamlessly at any time. It’s kind of like the world’s smallest MMO, which is what I keep telling our people. So it has persistency, but only for yourself and what we realised, after I think a year in, is that actually doesn’t work with a linear narrative.

Because you might jump in and… imagine a classic situation where this guy who helped you all along: he is a villain – gasp – he tricked you cruelly! But if you’re passed that point, of that reveal in the game, and I join we have a dissonance. Because you say, ‘No, no, don’t trust that guy!’ and I say, ‘Why not? He’s super nice’. Oh spoiler!

So what we had to come up with is basically the most interesting creative challenge for me personally, which is to come up with a way to tell a narrative in a game that has no beginning, no end, and basically goes on forever. And that is something where I personally invested the most creatively. It’s super, super interesting and also very innovative.

It’s also interesting enough when we started thinking about it internally that I realised, when talking to the industry, that there are a lot of people working on exactly that: us, The Division, Destiny, Ken [Levine] is working on that since he stopped working on BioShock… he calls is narrative Lego. You know? Like this way of doing meaningful narrative in a never-ending game, which nobody has ever done before.

GC: It is difficult, as multiplayer becomes more and more dominant, that so much of the action has no context, you’re just continually replaying the same gameplay situations again and again.

BD: Yes! There needs to be context, there needs to be purpose, there needs to be a reason!

GC: So how have you solved it?

BD: Hah! Well, wouldn’t you like to know?

GC: I would actually. Yes.

BD: [laughs] I can’t tell you exactly, because we cannot show it. I could tell you how we do it, but I cannot prove it to you. We’re gonna show that at a later point. But what we do is give purpose and meaning to your personal actions. It’s deceptively simple, the concept behind it, but it’s super hard to do. I realised. The clearest analogy I could find is think of it similar to a football commentator.

Like commentators at sports events, they put things into context. They explain what is going on on the field, like,’Oh, he has the ball and he’s passing, and oh that was a foul!’ So they comment on actual stuff that is happening. But what they also do is they give you background information. ‘Oh number seven is the lucky number, so in the team always the youngest player wears this’ and ‘Oh, that’s the same goal they did in the last World Cup’.

And that’s narrative right there, that’s background. That’s stuff that is interesting even to people that are not that much into sports. You know? They’re like, ‘Oh that’s interesting, they paid 20 million for that guy? That’s outrageous!’

Dead Island 2 – gaming’s most realistic trees

GC: It’s true actually, I’m not really interested in football but I will quite happily watch the post-match discussion at the end.

BD: Me too, me too! I’m not into soccer myself but we have a German football team that is really, really good. They win everything.

GC: Yeah, I saw the World Cup.

BD: [laughs] No, a local team. And it’s made up of internationals, and in the World Cup they spread out so they were actually playing hard matches against their best friends. You know, the people they spend all day with and they are now on opposite sides with. And that is something that struck me.

And what we are doing is very similar to that, so you give meaning by providing background. You give context by saying, ‘Oh, you’re doing this because of that’. And you provide purpose by commenting on what players do. You say, ‘Hey, that was really good how you chopped off that last zombie’s head. Impressive!’

So what you basically need to do is you need to track player actions, world states, what other people do, and at what point you are in the game. And then have a big room of dialogue lines and comments and actions and tasks for the player and then select the right ones and give it to them. That sounds super dry…

GC: No, I can see what you’re getting at.

BD: But it’s something I could talk about for days.

GC: And yet I’m afraid I’ve got about two minutes left.

BD: [laughs] Then I won’t.

GC: It’s easy for you to promise that the game will be better mechanically, and I’ll trust you on that. But my other problem is that… frankly, l’m sick of bloody zombies.

BD: [laughs]

GC: Is that a problem from your perspective? The fact that there are just so many zombie games nowadays. Is there a way that you’re handling them that you think is different?

BD: I think the best way to overcome that problem is quality of execution. There’s always room for good stuff, you know? And there’s always a surprise if you have a fresh take on something, which I believe we have in some areas. Like with this core seamless multiplayer, a game that never ends, that comments on what I do, that allows me to slaughter zombies…. but it’s not at the core of the game. It’s not about slaughtering zombies, it’s about you being a hero, about you being special, and about making you what you would want to be as a player anyway, and commenting on that.

I mean we have a lot of cool stuff, like mechanically and the setting and surprises and characters and everything. But I think what we have is basically a game that won’t end for you and will reward you for doing cool stuff. And I believe that’s a fresh take.

GC: That’s great, it’s been great talking to you.

BD: Well, thank you. That was an unexpected interview, I’m glad I skipped lunch for that.